A former Trump official wants to build a massive data center in a remote corner of Greenland. Will it work?

A former official of U.S. President Donald Trump's first administration is planning a multi-billion-dollar data center project in a remote corner of Greenland, as hyperscalers scramble to build out capacity across the globe to keep up with the AI rollout.

The data center is aiming to be operational at 300 megawatts (MW) by mid-2027, before further expansion would see it hit 1.5 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2028.

While that's currently several times the power capacity of any active data center in the world, there are plans to build multiple 1 GW-plus facilities across the globe over the next two years as the race to develop AI infrastructure continues to gather pace.

The Greenland data center project will cost billions of dollars to complete and has binding commitments with investors to finance half of its initial phase of development and half of the final phase, Drew Horn, a senior aide to Trump's first-term vice president Mike Pence and CEO of GreenMet, a company that's offering strategic support to the project, told CNBC.

The venture is eyeing a buildout in the Kangerlussuaq area, a small settlement at the end of a deep fjord on the southwest coast of the Arctic island, with an airport, he added.

Technical partners have been enlisted to help with the physical buildout, but the project has yet to secure land or approvals from the local authorities, Horn said. He declined to share the names of the other companies involved in the venture because the information isn't public yet.

Commercial opportunities in Greenland have been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks as the Arctic island has become the center of a geopolitical firestorm after U.S. President Donald Trump doubled down on acquisition talk. 

Critical minerals mining and freshwater reserves have been touted as potential prospects, though skeptics point to logistical challenges around tapping into them with Greenland's limited infrastructure.  

Data center deals hit a record $61 billion in 2025 amid a rush to build out the infrastructure needed to power energy-intensive AI workloads. Big tech firms, including Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, AWS, Microsoft and Google are investing huge sums into developing facilities across the globe.

Work on plans for the Greenland data center project began a year ago, and Horn told CNBC it has secured technical partners to assist with construction, operation and supplying energy.

Committed financing, which is in the form of debt and equity, is contingent on the project meeting key milestones, including securing permits from local government, said Horn — who was also a senior advisor to both the energy and intelligence departments towards the end of Trump's first term.

Other former senior Trump employees also have stakes in GreenMet, which says on its website that it helps companies with government and private funding and strategic partnerships.  

George Sorial, who was an executive vice president and chief compliance counsel at the Trump Organization until 2019, and Keith Schiller, who was a longtime bodyguard for Trump and director of Oval Office operations during the U.S. president's first term, helped set up the company in 2021 and remain shareholders.

"We are not actively involved with GreenMet or Greenland," Sorial told CNBC. "We are passive minority shareholders in GreenMet and have no management role in the company." Schiller had not responded to a CNBC request for comment as this story went live.

The GreenMet CEO has been developing relationships with officials in the Greenlandic and Danish administrations as he looks to advance the project. He met the Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Møller Sørensen on Wednesday, as part of a "continuing dialogue," to discuss the data center, Horn said. CNBC has approached Denmark's U.S. embassy for comment.

While officials on all sides have been supportive of the project, the "issue is not so much on the private side, it's on the diplomatic," Horn said, pointing to the geopolitical tensions surrounding the U.S. push to acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Tensions have cooled since Trump backtracked on plans to impose tariffs on several European nations over the issue, but questions still remain as negotiations around U.S. military and economic involvement in Greenland continue.

"Our effort, which is purely private, it succeeds only if we have the buy-in from the relevant affected parties and countries," Horn said.

"Larger corporate entities" will be taking the lead on the construction and development of the data center, but GreenMet will continue to be involved as an advisor as the project looks to secure government investment from nations including the U.S., Greenland, Denmark, and other NATO countries, Horn told CNBC.

"We've spent about a year putting together everything from the power to the technology components, [and] we have a Greenlandic partner on the ground," Horn said. "Right now we're waiting on approvals from the Greenlandic side."

A big challenge for projects of this scale in Greenland is access to power. For the first phase of the project, which is targeting 300 MW power capacity, the plan is to use specialized barges carrying Liquefied Natural Gas to the fjord, Horn said.

The venture plans to build a hydroelectric facility — 70% of the island's energy comes from such facilities — to power the second phase, which would see the data center hit 1.5 GW capacity. Permits and approvals from the Greenlandic government are still pending for both the barges and the facility. Greenland's Ministry of Business has been approached for comment.

Horn argues that if local authorities greenlight the large hydroelectric facility, energy prices will make the project commercially viable long-term.

There are some significant advantages to building data centers in an environment with low temperatures, analysts told CNBC.

"The biggest value sits in its resource profile, specifically in hydro for electricity generation and a 'free cooling' proposition given the lower ambient temperature," Noah Ramos, strategist at investment research firm Alpine Macro, told CNBC.

But there are hurdles the project will have to overcome. "Building in the Arctic is capital intensive; construction seasons are short, and the heat from the servers can melt the very ground the building sits on... specialized engineering is needed," Ramos said.

Nvidia is also touting a new generation of chips that require less cooling. "It's early days, but if future generations of chips are even more efficient in this regard, it could negate the need for expensive data centre build outs in places like Greenland," Michael Field, chief equity strategist at Morningstar, told CNBC.